Hi, everyone! It’s been a while since the last update but, as a testament of all the work we’ve been putting into the game, we bring you a new changelog! Yes, another list of amazing features and the like that are now in the current build. The bad news are that, although I know how much everyone loves endless lists and walls of text, I will have to keep this one short because we are already deep into the following version. So, without further ado here is the list of changes in version 0.7.1!

New Heroes

I don’t want to spoil much but we’ve added 24 new heroes to the game, and some I dare say are pretty cool like Circe (who turns enemies into pigs) or Tithonus (cursed with eternal life but not eternal youth) and they also include a few cameos from some our favorite games.Hero Unlock System

This has been the largest change in the version. You can no longer buy persistent heroes or philosopher heroes. Instead, each of them now has an associated condition that you have to meet in order to unlock them (kill 50 harpies, reach Sparta without buying kings, get your defense modifier to 300%, etc). Once you do, you can recruit them in the Agora, selecting them via a new menu, but you will only be able to bring a limited number of them each run. So far it seems, it seems quite a lot of fun! Gotta unlock em all!

Bosses Revamp

We’ve reviewing and working on all the god’s battles. Some of them have improved significantly (like Hephaestus), others may still need a little tweaking, but I think we’ve made progress with all of them. The next step will be doing the same for the rest of the enemies (which is kind of what we are doing right now), but I am getting ahead of myself.

A Unique Theme in every World

Gordon has finished the tracks for each of the different levels and they are all in the game! Music lovers rejoice! Next up: tons of new sfx!Visual fxs in Lemnos

We’ve added a special visual filter and revamped the lava texture. Lemnos looks now better than ever!

Special levels

Once again, we are treading into spoiler territory here, but let me just say that for a while now we’ve been working on special levels that trigger very rarely and add have something different about them that changes the pace of a regular run. We already some of them working but they were almost an easter egg, now we’ve made official. A new bunch of them have been added (which, again, I don’t want to spoil), and now when you do find one you will have Homer to guide you and hint you about what is going on.

And that’s about it for version 0.7.1. Lots of minor additions, tweaking and improvements, but as I said, there is no time for that now. However, besides all the wonders and amazement of the changelog, we have some very exciting piece of news to share: Next month, we will be showing Okhlos at the 5th edition of the Media Indie Exchange!

The showcase will be on March 14, at the IGN Headquarters, in San Francisco, where attendees will have the chance to play some Okhlos, as well as fine selection of other independent games. So if you are in the area, be sure to drop by! And if not, don’t worry because there may some streams going on that night too! Do you want any more info? Go right here: http://www.mediaindieexchange.com/event/gdc-week-2016/

Among the many things we have working on these last weeks, we made a full review of all the boss battles in Okhlos. We playtested them, took notes and then discussed what was working about them, what wasn’t and what we could do to improve them. It’s a lengthy process but a rewarding one. So we want to show you how we do this. And as a example, we chose to tell you about all the changes that one of those bosses has undergone: Hephaestus.

Remember him? We introduced him back in one of our very first posts about the game, where we showed you the main antagonist in Okhlos, the hateful twelve Olympian gods. Hephaestus is Hera’s son, Aphrodite’s husband, and the god of blacksmiths, artisans, craftsmen, fire and volcanoes. He made all the cool weapons and gadgets the other gods and some heroes would wield, and he even made living machines, like the bronze giant Talos. All in all, a impressive chap. But back to the game.

Hephaestus Version 1.0

By the time of that post about the Olympian gods, we had already sketched out how Hephaestus was going to look and what he was going to do. It was very simple. He would have an area melee attack, which was smashing everyone around him with his hammer, also a ranged attack, throwing a lava boulder, and finally he would summon automatons, because he made them and lots of them lying around.

Ye Olde Hephaestus

But things couldn’t be so simple. After implementing a first version a playing a bit we found out that the battle against Hephaestus wasn’t as fun as it could be. One problem was that the combat ended up being too static. Asides from the melee attack, which you could block, there was really no reason to move the mob. The best strategy was to swarm the god and keep pounding on him, ignoring any of the enemies he summoned and never getting far enough for him to use his ranged attack. Not that much fun indeed. Hence, a new version of Hephaestus was born.

Hephaestus Version 2.0

So we had a boss battle that was too static, and a god with two thirds of his attacks rendered useless by the most simple of the player’s tactics. What’s the first thing to try if a battle against a boss is to static? Making him move! Right? Hephaestus already did move around the level, slowly, but he moved. So, make him faster? For one part that didn’t fit the theme, Hephaestus was supposed to be a crippled god, strong but not particularly nimble or agile. We even made him with a cane! But asides from that, if we made him faster the player would simply spend more time running around him, which was not particularly fun either.

Concept vs final Pixel Art

The solution we came up then was to set up a safe zone inside his arena, where he would go to summon his automatons. The area would be outside the mob’s reach so he could spend all the time he wanted invoking minion or preparing devastating ranged attacks. A classic villainous move! Leave the battlefield for a while, let your underlings entertain the heroes and then came back for a new round of evilness. Perfect!

Or not. Even though this solution did work, and fixed the main issue while Hephaestus was in his safe area, the rest of the combat still felt pretty much the same. It now had a nice change of pace when Hephaestus went away to summon minions, but we set out to improve it even further. A new version was on the way.

Hephaestus Version 3.0

Around the time we were working on that version of Hephaestus as I was playing Titan Souls, an amazing game, as are all game published by the wonderful folks of Devolver Digital (blatant cross promotion – blatant cross promotion – blatant cross promotion). One of the bosses in Titan Souls is Vinethesis, plant-like creature that sits at the center of the level and spins around its spiked vines around. This boss seemed to have a problem similar to the one we faced with Hephaestus. The optimal way to beat him was to stand still and way for the right moment to shoot. However, the devs had came up with a way to make the player move. Vinethesis summons a cloud of poisonous spores that follows the player, and kills him if he stands still inside it.

The battle against Vinethesis in Titan Souls

It was a great idea! So let’s rip it off I said … err… I mean, let’s pay homage to the great game by implementing this great solution to our problem instead of resorting to other boss fight’s tropes. And so we did. We made a cloud of flames and smoke that slowly moves toward the mob, damaging any person (or animals) that comes in contact with it. If the mob spends too much time swarming around Hephaestus, the cloud will move over him, providing him with the cover he needs to bring some minions or use his ranged attack. Sweet!

And so everything was fine and we retired to an isolated Caribbean beach where we spent the rest of our days sipping cocktails and playing cards with an old fellow named Chachingo, right? Nope, we kept on playtesting Hephaestus battle and came up with a couple of things to improve. A new version was on the way.

Hephaestus Version 4.0

You remember that Hephaestus had a ranged attack, right? Throwing lava boulders at the mob? Well, up until now, Hephaestus wasn’t really able to use it that much, so that attack never got the chance to shine. Once Hephaestus started using it we realized that the attack had some issues of its own. No shining for you.

First there was the problem of where to get those lava boulders. When we planned it we thought that since he was in a volcano level, he could just grab it from anywhere, but digging up some lava from the spot he was standing didn’t really look very well. Neither was a good idea going all the way to lava rivers at the edge of the scenario each time he wanted to make ranged attack. After a few tests we decided to go in a different direction: Hephaestus wouldn’t dig up chunks of lava to throw any more, he would now invoke a meteor shower to rain upon the unsuspecting mob. Same as effective, twice as shiny and godly.

The other thing we changed in this version was how and when the smoke cloud appeared. At first it was almost an autonomous entity that was there in the level, it spawned when the battle began and stayed there until you defeated Hephaestus. What we did now was integrating into Hephaestus attacks. The cloud has finite lifespan but Hephaestus can summon another one whenever he needs it. Not a huge change but something that makes things more interesting.

And, unless I am forgetting something else (which is entirely possible), those were all the changes that Hephaestus has been through until today.

Is this the end of the story? Probably no. We’ve just started the closed beta and started getting feedback from players so we will probably do a fifth version, perhaps even a sixth version! But we wanted to show you a little about the iterative process of designing the bosses in Okhlos. They have always been one of the biggest challenges in the development of the game so we want to make them as best as possible.

Two awards, one week! Shazam! Yeah! In a span of just seven days Okhlos was shown at two different events in Buenos Aires and returned with an award from each one. SLAM DUNK!

First was the turn of the EVA (short for Exposición de Videojuegos de Argentina) which is like an Argentinean GDC. For more than a decade now the EVA has been a gathering place for developers from all over the country, featuring various workshops and a huge number of talks (this time, for instance, the keynote talk was by Brian Moriarty, of Loom fame). This year they also decided to present a small number of games with an award for Most Promising Game. Okhlos was among them. CHA-CHING!

Receiving the prize at Meet The Games

Next was the turn of Meet the Game, a great event that has been growing exponentially since its debut three years ago. The focus of this event is to bring games closer to the audience, so they had a main hall filled with videogames for anyone to play, as well a floor devoted to party games and arcades and another to boardgames. All of this while a non-stop stream of talks was taking place. But the icing of the cake was the showcase, closing the event, where from all of the games in the show Okhlos was chosen as Game of the Year. SCORE!

But we didn’t rest on our laurels. Not at all. After a night of getting drunk on myrrh we went straight back to work.

And speaking about work, if you are one of the followers of this blog you will know that from time to time we post a list of things we’ve added into the game. This should come as no surprise in a development blog, but what may surprise you is the insane amount of new stuff that we have added since version 0.5.0. Tons of changes! Amazing new stuff! One addition better than other! Totally radical stuff! You’ll see.

(Remember! You can click on all images to enlarge them)

NEW ENEMIES!

The unstoppable Minotaur, which is one the brand new sub-bosses, and came along with its labyrinth.

The Hydra, with its nasty lair and its many, many heads.

Hades (the god, not the realm).

The great Athena, who seems nice until she starts plowing through your mob.

Hephaestus, the god of volcanoes and smithing.

The Hecatonchires, who is ridiculouly violent.

Argos Panopte, the one-hundred-eyed giant. Creepy!

NEW TRICKS FOR OLD ENEMIES!

Apollo’s new healing power. He was the god of healing too, so it kind of makes sense.

New Posidon’s attacks. Watery stuff galore!

Enemy spawning portals. More enemies coming from the portal dimension!

NEW WAYS TO SPEND YOUR UNITS

The Unit’s Market, where you can now trade units of one type in exchange of another type.

NEW CHALLENGES!

New leader-targeted hazards: the confusing smoke altar, the lavish tree trap, and the slippery tentacle trap.

Hades (the realm, not the god).

New special levels, which will some spice to your quest through ancient Greece with things like rains of arrows and

NICER LOOKING THINGS!

New destroyed fx for props. Breaking stuff has never looked better.

Units movement interpolation. Unit’s movement is now as smooth as it gets.

NEW GUY IN THE HUD THAT TALKS TO YOU FROM TIME TO TIME!

That’s right, Homer is here to tell you the story of the ancient Greece’s favorite angry mob

Great news everyone! As some of you might have heard, we signed a publishing deal with the fine folks of Devolver Digital. The intrepid men and women who helped bring into the world games like Hotline Miami, Broforce or Talos Principle are now going to help Okhlos see the light of day (and they will have to deal once again with senseless violence, pixel art and deep philosophical questions).

What does this mean for the game? For starters, we know this deal will help us make Okhlos a more polished game, by increasing the QA and localization efforts for instance. Their knowledge and expertise will also make the launch as smooth as possible. Then, and perhaps most important of all, it will help us focus on making the game instead of spending time talking about the game and promoting it. So, win-win for everybody!

They are not ones to waste time, so what was the first thing they did? Bring Okhlos to PAX Prime!

Needless to say it was a great experience. We had the chance to show Okhlos to many, many people, and also got to meet a few who already knew and loved the game. It was four days of frantic activity but very fruitful. So we are extremely happy that they made room in the Devolver booth for an angry mob of ancient Greeks.